Problem of multiple OpenID Accounts
4. March 2007 – 22:05 byI like OpenID. I think it’s great and it is hopefully the future of single sign-on. Users just need one user name - an URL - and they are able to sign on to as many sites they want. What a great concept.
However I already have eight OpenID’s. Yes, that’s right. Eight. How come? When I registered with claimID they provided me with two OpenID’s. That’s cool and I didn’t care back then because I was registering with them to build an online identity. I didn’t know what OpenID was at that time. The third one is from myopenid.com. I registered with them because I thought it was cool to have a second OpenID provider. Sxipper is a very useful Firefox plugin, though also the fourth ID. But isn’t it even cooler to have my own blog URL as an OpenID? Yes, it is. The fifth OpenID.
There are also three OpenID’s which I have got rather unexpectedly. I have a Technorati account, an AOL account, and also commented on a Typepad blog and got a Typekey. All three services work as an OpenID.
So let’s say Yahoo, Google, Amazon, eBay, and many more will adopt OpenID. Will I have even more OpenID’s? That’s probably not the intention of the OpenID concept. I am probably missing something here but I think it should be possible to merge several OpenID’s so that everyone has just one or two. On the other side that’s contradicting the idea of decentralised OpenID providers, I guess.
Am I really missing anything here? Is there already a solution? Please tell me.
3 Responses to “Problem of multiple OpenID Accounts”
hahahaahaha. yeah, I have two already as well. from myopenid and sxipper. I don’t think that’s much of a probelm though. You just use your favorite openid for new services you sign up to.
merging them should be possible somehow as well. Though I think that could make it even more confussing. (say you merge your myopenid with your claimid which you use to sign into service x..If you’d do that you should really merge all into one or els you’d go nuts after some time)
I also think it might be nice to have more than one openid to use. For example if you want to keep your professional and private onlineactivities separate. might be also nice for paranoid (or realistic) people who are afraid of datamining.
By marcel weiss on Mar 4, 2007
Separating private and professional activities is a good idea. At least it makes sense somehow.
Though it won’t solve the problem that you will have a multitude of OpenID’s if more services adopt the concept. Of course, I am assuming that big companies like Google would follow AOL’s example and simply make user names an OpenID. Voila, another one.
By Carsten Pötter on Mar 4, 2007